On this episode, María do Mar Castro Varela and Aïcha Diallo talk with activistsDenise Garcia Bergt and Jennifer Kamau who are the founding members of the feminist collective International Women Space (IWS)in Berlin.

International Women* Space was founded in 2012 as a political, discursive and cultural platform bringing together and working with women* who have experienced migration and displacement through their narratives, representations and expertise.

Denise Garcia Bergt is an activist, journalist and filmmaker. She was born in Brazil and moved to Berlin in 2008, where she began working on the documentary Residenzpflicht. In December 2012, together with other activists, she founded the International Women* Space at the former Gerhart Hauptmann School in Berlin, which was occupied by refugees and activists.

Jennifer Kamau is a political activist born in Kenya and one of the co-founders of the International Women* Space (IWS). She coordinates the IWS’s refugee-women-only group called “Break Isolation”. The self-organised refugee women’s group visit different refugee camps and together elaborate and organise political campaigns.

In 2017, IWS organised a two-day conference in Berlin When I came to Germany. In six Panels, 22 women shared their experiences: women who came to West Germany as guest workers, women who came to East Germany as contract workers, migrant and refugee women who came to reunited Germany, and German women affected by racism. The conference was held in six languages. The videos can be seen here: https://iwspace.de/als-ich/

A Lover’s War is jointly created and directed by María do Mar Castro Varela & Aïcha Diallo. This interview series is an inquiry into the direct and indirect links between conflict, (re-)traumatization, resistance and endurance.

The conversation with Denise Garcia Bergt and Jennifer Kamau from International Women* Space (IWS) is part of the platform Caring for Conflict curated by DISTRICT Berlin and Institute for Queer Theory.

A Lover’s War #3 We Exist. We Resist. with International Women* Space (IWS)